Marlins slugger Giancarlo Stanton hit in head by Jose Fernandez pitch

A scary moment this afternoon on Field 4 where the Marlins were playing a sim game.

Giancarlo Stanton was hit on the back of the head, at the top of his neck, by a Jose Fernandez fastball during a simluated game.

You can see the video below.
Stanton appeared to be OK as the fastball glanced off his helmet and he never lost his footing.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjpR7nCdfIg

He left the game with trainer Mike Kozak in a golf cart but signed a few autographs while walking to the cart.

In the clubhouse, the back of his neck was wrapped in an ice pack.

Stanton said he did not expect to miss any time but would know better by tomorrow.

“It has happened before and there will be another time,” Stanton said.

“It hit me first and then the helmet decided to come in after the impact.”

He said the ball made impact “right on the bottom of the head, high neck area.

“I wasn’t dizzy or nothing. I saw a little grayness, fuzziness on the outside of my eyes. But it’s subsiding now,” Stanton said.

“Obviously he didn’t meant to. Why would he? No big deal.”

Fernandez, the Marlins’ top pitching prospect, was shaken up by the incident. He faced one more hitter and left the game, too.

Jose Fernandez is consoled by Wayne Rosenthal, the Marlins' minor league pitching coordinator, after hitting Giancarlo Stanton in the head with a pitch

Fernandez said the ball was traveling “at least 95 miles per hour” when it hit Stanton.

“My hands were sweating a lot. It was not a good pitch. It happens and I feel bad about it,” he said.

“He’s a good teammate and a great person. It’s not a good feeling, I promise you that. I feel like (crap) right now.

“I came right in before running I asked him if he was doing OK. I know I was throwing hard. The ball slipped out of my hand. God, I was nervous when I hit him.”

“When I let it go, I felt I didn’t have control of it. It came out of hand. It could have gone to the other side. It went to the wrong side. I feel really bad,” he said.

Last year, Fernandez hit five batters in 134 innings at low Class A Grensboro and high-Class A Jupiter.

“Normally I have lot of control and I throw a lot of strikes. That was one pitch. It’s just the ball slipped out of my hand,” he said.

Fernandez said as soon as he arrived at the clubhouse, he jogged over to Stanton to apologize.

“When I asked him how he’s doing, he laughed. He said he’s fine,” Fernandez said.

“I told him, ‘I’m sorry. You know more than anybody nobody is trying to hit anybody, same team. He just laughed and said, ‘Bro, it’s OK. It’s baseball. It happens.”’

Jose Fernandez walks back to the clubhouse with a Marlins employee

Stanton was taken to a local hospital for X rays as a precaution.

“I think he is going to be fine,” Manager Mike Redmond. “He will have a contusion on his neck but it looks like he will be fine.”

Redmond said there were no signs of a concussion.

“We’ll see how he checks out. We are anticipating everything to be fine and he’ll be right back out there,” Redmond said, before laughing.

“He’s a tough guy. It didn’t even drop him…

“We don’t want anybody to get hit, especially a guy like him who means so much to this team…

“You worry about Fernandez, too, how a young kid like that responds. He faced him two days ago (in live batting practice) and everything was fine.”

As for how the team will handle Stanton in the next two days, Redmond said: “It’s hard to say. We’ll just wait and see how he is doing tomorrow, how he responds in the morning, If he feels fine and everything is good to go then I don’t have a problem. Probably the quicker we get him back in the box the better after something like that.

“I’ve seen guys get hit before. You always have a little bit of anxiety when you come back. So definitely you want to get him back in there as soon as he is able to.”

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